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- The European Court of Justice decides the regulation of modern methods of genetic engineering in agriculture
- The so-called gene scissors such as Crispr-Cas produce plants that differ little from conventional cultivars.
- If judges see it differently, new genetic engineering techniques could also be used to break into Germany.
There are certainties that we do not care too much about should leave. One of them is that Germany remains an area without GMOs for all time. It's still true for the moment. The inhabitants of the Federal Republic reject genetically modified foods. They also do not want meat from animals fed genetically modified foods. Even though there are hardly any rational reasons, people are afraid of genetic engineering – and politics has long accepted and even supported that attitude.
This Wednesday, a judgment of the European Court of Justice could put an end to this era. The Luxembourg judges decide this morning on a complaint from the French associations of farmers and farmers, who had first found a solution to a thorny issue in their country two years ago. While conventional genetic engineering typically produces plants that are unlikely to be produced in nature and therefore clearly fall under the European Directive on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), molecular biologists have developed new techniques for modifying genetic material. [19659007] The Right Side of Genetic Engineering ” class=”lazyload teaserable-layout__image”/>
The Right Side of Genetic Engineering
These new methods make categorization more difficult. On the one hand, because the new methods do not generally create transgenic plants, that is, they are made with foreign genetic material. On the other hand, because the results often can not be distinguished from conventional breeding.
The Advocate General at the European Court of Justice does not want to regulate new genetic engineering as the old
What do you do with it? How do you adjust that? Should this be regulated? The EU Commission in Brussels was supposed to discuss how to legally deal with the new methods in 2015, but one post-appointment was postponed. At the same time, genetic engineers have developed a new miracle tool for accurate cutting of genetic material: Crispr-Cas. This profitable gap is not the only process being discussed. But Crispr-Cas has revolutionized the life sciences in the last five years, opening up unsuspected opportunities for plant breeders.
For some too many. In the fall of 2016, the Union of Organic Farmers Confederation Paysanne has addressed the Supreme Court in France with eight other organic associations. They all asked that new genetic engineering be regulated as genetic engineering within the meaning of existing laws. The French court referred the case to the European Court of Justice
The farmers managed to do what the Commission had failed in Brussels: to clarify. If the decision of the European Court of Justice is now based on the opinion of the Attorney General, Michal Bobek, the new genetic engineering will not be regulated as genetic engineering – and therefore hardly distinguishable from it. German agriculture since the judgment is binding on all EU members.
German environmental associations, which last week under the auspices of the German Federal Agency for the Environment and Nature Conservation in Germany (BUND) with a resolution against the anticipated verdict of the jury dared . "It is only when organisms produced with the help of a new genetic engineering are subject to a risk assessment and labeling that the legislator fulfills its duty to protect the natural foundations of life, "says the newspaper.
In the version of Bobek, published since January, it seems different. For the Advocate General, the so-called mutagenesis, for which there has always been an exception clause in the European directive on deliberate release, is decisive. Mutagenesis refers to the artificial production of point changes in the genome of a living being. Such mutations occur in biological organisms even without human intervention, for example by sunlight. For plant breeding, they are central because only mutations bring new properties. As a result, mutations have been promoted for decades in breeding, by radioactive radiation and chemical substances. Mutagenesis caused in this way is called non-directed because thousands of mutations occur at a time, but without knowing where in the ebulla. You must discover first. New gene technology can produce a desired mutation directly and specifically in the genome – without the collateral damage of radiation and chemistry.
Not only for Bobek, but also for many experts and politicians, this justifies the legal use of new genetic technology as "targeted mutagenesis". classify differently than classical genetic engineering. Even the Greens see little reason to reject new methods in principle. Party chairman Robert Habeck recently said in an interview that they did not want to "put old answers" on genetic engineering that is "new." Urs Niggli, who heads the Research Institute of Organic Farming in Frick, Switzerland, even advocated the use of techniques in organic farming. And Detlef Bartsch, head of the Department of Genetic Engineering at the Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety, believes that even consumers could be in agreement if the plants produced with the help new methods were not regulated as GMOs. It was enough to realize that methods for the targeted generation of mutations were no longer "an abbreviation in the process of plant breeding".
Reframe the gap with the problems
